1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an embroidery data generating device which generates embroidery data of an embroidery pattern composed of a plurality of color-based pattern portions, a computer-readable storage medium which stores an embroidery data processing program, and a sewing machine.
2. Related Art
There have conventionally been provided sewing machines which sew an embroidery pattern based on embroidery data. In one of the sewing machines, a plurality of embroidery patterns is stored on an internal storage device or an external storage device such as a ROM card or flexible disc. A user selects a desirable one of the embroidery patterns. In the sewing machine, embroidery data of the selected embroidery pattern is read, and the embroidery pattern is sewn on a workpiece cloth while an embroidery frame holding the workpiece cloth is transferred by a transfer mechanism.
Embroidery data of an embroidery pattern composed of a plurality of color-based pattern portions includes thread color data for identifying colors of the respective color-based pattern portions. The color-based pattern portions are sewn by the use of colors (thread colors) set as thread color data respectively. For example, an embroidery pattern of girl's head with ribbons includes a plurality of color-based pattern portions of face, hair, ribbons, eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, ears etc. These plural color-based pattern portions are sewn by the use of a plurality of thread colors respectively. Furthermore, the embroidery data is set so that the color-based pattern portions such as “eyes” or “eyebrows” are sewn so as to overlap the color-based pattern portion of “face” after the entire region of “face” has been sewn. Thus, the color-based pattern portion of “face” is not sewn on a part of the workpiece cloth except for portions of “eyes” and “eyebrows” to be sewn. Accordingly, the color-based pattern portions of “eyes” and “eyebrows” are sewn so as to overlap with the color-based pattern portion of “face.” This embroidery sewing manner results in a distinguished-looking embroidery pattern without gaps in a boundary between color-based pattern portions. Furthermore, a color-based pattern portion of “ribbons” is sewn so that a part or entire of “ribbons” overlaps with a sewn part of “hair.”
Assume now that the aforementioned “hair” is colored dark brown and the ribbons are colored white. Thus, when the color-based pattern portion of “hair” to be firstly sewn is darker than the color-based pattern portion of “ribbons” to be subsequently sewn, an embroidery thread of “hair” located under an embroidery thread of “ribbons” is sometimes visible through the upper embroidery thread of “ribbons.” This would reduce the quality of embroidery pattern.
In view of the above-described drawback, the conventional art has proposed an embroidery data generating device which is configured to correct the thread color data so that a first thread color of the color-based pattern portion to be sewn later in the sewing sequence becomes darker than a second thread color of the color-based pattern portion to be sewn earlier. In this case, the thread color of the color-based pattern portion to be sewn earlier is corrected into a darker color than the color-based pattern portion to be sewn later in the overlapping color-based pattern portions.
However, the user does not sometimes wish the colors of the color-based pattern portions to be constrained by the colors of other color-based pattern portions and sometimes desires to sew one or more color-based pattern portions in favorite or extraordinary colors, instead of specified colors. However, in order that the colors of the color-based pattern portions may be designated in the above-described manner, data of color-based pattern portions needs to be read one by one for confirmation or designation of corresponding thread color data. This results in time-consuming and troublesome work.